A New Leaf

In the vibrant hothouse that is Chris Garofalo’s Chicago studio, nearly every surface holds carefully composed displays — natural specimens, souvenir postcards, family photos and random objects, like a petrified frog or lurid blue ceramic eggplants. A framed, somewhat faded dinosaur mural reigns over the space; herds of small plastic animals roam the shelf above her worktable. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the found objects from the art.

The question of what is real and what is not is at the heart of Garofalo’s work. Her spiky, surreal porcelain pieces are neither plant nor animal. She is most drawn, she says, to things that look familiar but are sui generis: “The idea of species intermingling intrigues me, and it’s boring to make something that already exists.”

Garofalo herself is a small, spare woman with a direct gaze and a quick sense of humor. She makes many of her own clothes. She studied printmaking and was working as a graphic designer when she met her husband, Doug, a Chicago architect who died last year after a long battle with brain cancer. “He was working as a carpenter in his spare time when we met,” she recalls. “He taught me how to use power tools and signed me up for a clay class at Lillstreet Art Center. That was my introduction to working in three dimensions.” Garofalo started making pots for their garden, ultimately finding inspiration in the plants.

When the artist Thomas Demand included her ceramic pieces in “La Carte d’Après Nature,” an exhibition he curated for the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco in 2010, he displayed them in glass cases like the ones you would see in a natural history museum. (A version of the exhibition was shown at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York last summer.) This pleased Garofalo, who says she has “always liked natural history museums more than art museums.” Garofalo often mounts pieces on the wall or hangs them from the ceiling; in one of her favorite exhibitions, at a conservatory, her sculptures were suspended among the plants themselves, causing visitors to do a double take. “Rather than looking like they were made, I want my pieces to look like they grew or made themselves,” she says. “I don’t want to be the creator.”